XN000022-1995-07-07 — Page 17

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Question: (Inaudible)

CS: Yes, they will continue to benefit. I can assure you that to the extent that some people have not contributed or are unable to contribute, they will be able to rely on social security payments. We are also, of course, at the moment conducting an overall review of the adequacy of social security payments for the entire population, whether it is for the single parent families, for elderly people or for other groups. And in the light of that review we will, of course, decide whether existing levels of payments are adequate and if not, what resources we can devote towards increasing these payments.

End/Friday, July 7, 1995

Volume and price movements of external trade in April 1995

In the first four months of 1995, the volume of re-exports increased by 16% over the same period last year, while the volume of domestic exports increased by 7.3%, according to the statistics released today (Friday) by the Census and Statistics Department.

Taking re-exports and domestic exports together, the volume of total exports increased by 15%. Meanwhile, imports increased by 19% in volume.

The growth in the volume of trade is derived from the growth in trade values with the effect of price changes being discounted.

As regards price changes over the same period of comparison, the prices of re- exports and domestic exports increased by 3.4% and 2.2% respectively. Import prices increased by 5.6%. Price changes are reflected by changes in unit value indices, which are compiled based on average unit values or, for certain commodities, based on specific price data.

The terms of trade index, defined as the ratio of total export price index to import price index, decreased by 2.3% in the first four months of 1995 over the same period last year.

Comparing April 1995 with April 1994, the volume of re-exports increased by 9.1%, while that of domestic exports decreased by 1.7%. Taken together, the volume of total exports increased by 7.1%. Meanwhile, the volume of imports grew by 12%.